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Guided Meditation: Mindfulness and Love

So, hello everyone. I feel particularly heartfelt to greet you on this weekend of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. I think at the foundation of his message, and therefore the foundation of his life that influenced this country to such an extent that there's a holiday after him, the foundation is his dedication to love. At its best, or what it can grow into, mindfulness becomes love, or mindfulness is inseparable from love. When it's strong, when it's well developed, there's something about the nature of awareness—that is, unrestricted awareness, which is unveiled, unclouded—that allows the heart's capacity for love to shine.

I suspect that for each person, love is something a little different. It's not like a single, absolute, same phenomenon, but it's the human capacity to care for others with generosity, with friendliness, with valuing of others, respecting others. Now, the beautiful thing that can happen with mindfulness is that when mindfulness and love seem inseparable, maybe become the same, it also doesn't require having an object. It doesn't require having someone that is the object of love. It's just love, just care, just warmth, just tenderness, or gentleness, or compassion.

In this huge family, love is like a family of different emotions. So I don't want to narrow it down to one thing for any of us. But to sit quietly, openly in awareness, making space for the possibility for the many flavors of love to be born, to show themselves. And so to value this awareness, this mindfulness enough—to value it more than our distractions—so that when we are distracted or caught up in concerns and feelings, we don't dismiss those, but we center ourselves in the awareness of them. Maybe with the idea that awareness is kindness. Awareness is free enough from our concerns and our challenges that there's room for the heart's capacity for love for everything, including our challenges and including our distracted mind.

So, assuming a meditation posture. Taking a posture itself that maybe expresses your care, your goodwill towards yourself. Maybe one that allows the chest and the heart center to begin to open to all that's here for us, the difficult and the wonderful. And to gently close the eyes, not to shut out the world, but rather so there's more room to open to a different way of sensing this world, knowing this world from deep inside. The place in which there may be love, compassion, kindness.

Take a few long, slow, deep breaths, as a way of awakening a heightened sensitivity to our body. Which is not just our physical body, but our physical capacity for sensing the physical. Awareness. Embodiment.

Breathing in deeply and exhaling, and settling into the body's capacity to be aware, to sense, to feel.

And then gently letting your breathing return to normal. With a relatively normal breath, on the inhale, feel whatever tension or holding there might be in the body, wherever it appears. On the exhale, kindly, without ambition, soften and relax around that tightness. It might be around the face, the chest. It might be around the belly, or in the arms and hands, in the hips or the legs.

What kind of receptivity, or opening, or what kind of sensing would you need to feel your capacity to love? Where in your body would you open, feel, or rest your attention if you were going to be available for love, kindness, the generosity of spirit?

And if it's comfortable for you, on the inhale, fill your love with awareness, with sensing and feeling. Maybe breathing into the place where love is found in your body. On the exhale, continue to soften and relax into that place where awareness and love are closely connected, touching each other as you breathe, moving to become almost the same. Lovingly aware. Mindfully loving. One breath at a time.

Perhaps turning the corners of your lips up a little bit, just enough to feel a smile. And with that little smile, is it a little easier for mindfulness to be accompanied by kindness? For whatever you're mindful of, for whatever mindfulness knows, what happens if you use the quiet, soft mental note, "yes." Just "yes." Without agreeing or approving, just a yes for awareness. Yes, this too I can be aware of. And will that yes make room for kindness, for love, as you are aware?

As we come to the end of this sitting, to dedicate whatever benefit has come, whatever goodness known and unknown that has been part of this meditation, we dedicate it so that it might spread from us out into the world for the welfare and happiness of everyone.

May whatever goodness and benefit that has come from this sitting somehow influence our actions in the world, so we act from love, we act from our goodness. Whatever ways in which goodness and love live in us, may it spread out so that those who sorrow may be happy. Those who fear may be safe. For those who are threatened with violence, that they may experience peace. That those who are oppressed may have the oppression lifted, so they can breathe freely and live freely, and find their way in the world successfully.

May we be a source of goodness for this world. May all beings be happy.

Love in Action Inspired by Dr Martin Lurther King Jr

Warm greetings on this Sunday. This is the weekend that here in the United States we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. I love this holiday because it's the holiday that I associate most closely with love. Martin Luther King based his life on a love that was inclusive, that was not compromised by the conflicts he was in. He sought to stay present with love in these conflicts, to search for cooperation, to search for mutual kind regard.

This dedication to love, which was at the foundation of his life, can be celebrated on this day. I'd like to celebrate more than his great accomplishments like civil rights and voting rights that were really the outcome of his dedication to love. I suppose the other holidays that the United States celebrates, we could infuse them with love. Labor Day and our love, care, goodwill, and gratitude for the people who work in all the different ways which sustain our lives. Memorial Day and Veterans Day, maybe it can evoke a certain kind of love. Maybe even love for our enemies in conflict, and the dedication of people's lives to protect what they love. Maybe it's possible to infuse everything with love, for that to be the foundation.

Of course, it's very common for us to say, "But what if not that? How could I do it? How can I love that?" Martin Luther King's message, I believe, is that if you don't love, you harm yourself. Certainly, he said that hate harms the hater. So he was dedicated to not hating. Against tremendous challenges, he dedicated himself to love, and it's inspiring what's possible.

Martin Luther King was inspired in turn by Mahatma Gandhi^[1]. He said that one of Gandhi's great contributions was to show how love can be evoked for social action, love can be evoked for civil rights, for freedom, for overcoming government oppression and national oppression of all kinds. Martin Luther King took that message from Gandhi and dedicated his life to the force of love, the power of love.

It is said that he was first inspired to non-violence by Henry David Thoreau^[2], who had an essay on civil disobedience. From Thoreau, he learned and was inspired that you could stand up against the government, against the state, in non-violent ways. He spent a lot of time studying this and thinking about non-violence in college, graduate school, and seminary. He was influenced by reading the philosophy of non-violence and social change, and it got him more and more centered in this idea of non-violence. But when he was introduced to Mahatma Gandhi, that's where he understood that this dedication to non-violent change could be centered on love.

He was dedicated to an all-inclusive love where no one was left out. He dedicated himself to a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation, an all-embracing and unconditional love for everyone.

Is this possible? Is it interesting? Is it valuable? Is it valuable enough that we can dedicate ourselves to it? Perhaps on this holiday, at least for this one, to emphasize love this weekend.

I read a short story that came out of Thailand, published in a news site there. In Bangkok, they have these small corner stores that are money exchangers—places to transfer and send money. Thais will use them to send money to their relatives in the countryside from Bangkok. For a long time, there was a woman who came once a month at the end of the month and would send 20,000 baht^[3] to her relatives in the countryside. There was no real discussion about it, just a matter-of-fact transaction.

One day she came and wanted to transfer 15,000 instead of 20,000. The owner of the shop asked her what was happening, and she said, "Well, times are difficult and this is all I can do." He asked her, "Oh, I'm sorry to hear that," and somehow in the conversation he learned that even when she sent 20,000 baht to her son so he can go to school in the countryside and her sister to take care of their elderly parents, she had very little money for herself. It seemed she worked a little bit as a masseuse, which overlapped with the sex industry there—something that she really detested doing but felt that she had to.

The next month she came back with 20,000 baht and wanted to have it sent to the countryside. He took the money and did a money transfer. She returned a while later and said, "There's been a mistake. You didn't transfer 20,000 baht, you transferred 200,000 baht."

He said to her, "It was no mistake. I thought I would try to support you and help you in your life that's so challenging for you." She cried and thanked him.

Some months later, she didn't come back anymore to transfer money. But then he got a Facebook message from her that she had opened a noodle shop back in her hometown, and that it was already thriving. People loved her noodles and food. She had taken that money, started a business, got out of the massage trade, and was now running a business that sustained her more than her massage trade could do, and she thanked him deeply.

The title of this article that I read was "Love Without Action is a Four-Letter Word." That was a powerful title. I thought, What are they going to say here? Love without action is a four-letter word.

There's a group of Buddhist teachers who started a non-profit called Mettā in Action^[4]. Mettā is a Pali word for love or loving-kindness. So, loving-kindness in action. They raise money to support mostly schools and medical facilities in Burma. They've built schoolhouses and supported teachers to teach in the schools, and that's been their mission for many years now. So love without action—what is love without action? And what is it to act on love and live with love?

Certainly, we find in Buddhism a lot of emphasis on the value of love, kindness, and goodwill. If Buddhism has a sacred body of texts, technically it has no official opening passages, but because of the fame of the Dhammapada^[5]—this book of verses—sometimes that's seen as the opening teachings of early Buddhism.

The text begins in the first chapter, not with the very first two verses, but the third verse, quoting someone who's exclaiming: "He abused me, attacked me, defeated me, robbed me."

And then: "For those carrying ill will such as this, hatred does not end. For those who say, 'She abused me, attacked me, defeated me, robbed me,' for those carrying ill will such as this... for those not carrying ill will such as this, hatred ends."

When hatred takes the form of attacking and criticizing other people, and being angry with them in a mean-spirited way, hatred doesn't end. Hatred never ends through hatred. By love alone does it end. This is the eternal truth. The literal meaning is "by non-hatred alone does it end. This is eternal truth," but it's often understood that the word non-hatred means love in this context.

Then there's a very interesting next verse, and maybe this punctuates it: "Many do not realize we here must die. For those who realize this, quarrels end."

There's something about realizing that our life is limited on this planet, that maybe we don't want to waste time wasting it with hatred, wasting it with greed, wasting it with closing in on ourselves or closing in tight on one particular clan, one particular tribe or race, but rather to have some love that's all-embracing.

Martin Luther King was this way. I think he's most famous for the work he did for civil rights, and the need for it was so great in his time. When he grew up as a young man in the South, he saw tremendous injustice happening—injustice in voting, injustice in the courts, injustice by the police, and injustice by the society around him that his African-American neighbors and friends struggled under.

He wanted to change that and work for that. So he's famous for his civil rights work, and it was phenomenal what happened among the civil rights people that he was one of the leaders for, in terms of changing a whole country. They did not give up their non-violent dedication under the onslaught of violence. Most of you have maybe seen some of the videos of the tremendous violence that was done in Montgomery against children and teenagers and high school students, and the violence on the bridge in Selma where a lot of the civil rights leaders and others were brutally attacked by the police. People were killed, shot, and lynched coming to the South to try to make a difference. Even in these horrendous conditions, Martin Luther King refused to give up love.

It's hard to believe that anyone could do this, but this is a message that he said all religions taught. For him, he was just trying to live out the message of love that he found in the teachings of Jesus and Christianity. He made a very powerful statement about love from a Christian point of view. He said at one point, "Let us love one another. Love is God." Love is God, so to not worship love, to destroy love, for him is a destruction of God.

He also wrote: "When I speak of love, I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality."

So, is love at the heart of Buddhism? Love in action in Buddhism is described by the word anukampa^[6]—a quivering of the heart, the vibrancy of the heart that translates into action, care, kindness, and support of others. The Buddha dedicated his life to this anukampa. I think it was the organizing principle for his life. He was dedicated to mettā, to loving-kindness. When people came to him to attack him, both verbally with anger and hostility, and in one story where they came with hostility to actually try to kill him, his response was to radiate the power of his love.

His power of his mettā towards the people, and in one case an animal that was coming to kill him—an elephant^[7]—the stories say that his power of love was enough to stop the attacks that he was receiving. Is it realistic to do that in the face of the threat of violence?

The Buddha made a tremendously powerful statement about this that it's easy to dismiss because maybe it's hyperbole, maybe it is so unrealistic that how could we ever make this true? But as Martin Luther King says, love is the unifying principle of life and this dedication to love. And so the Buddha said that even if bandits come and capture you and start cutting off your arms, do not succumb to hate^[8], but radiate your kindness through them.

I think we have to understand this instruction from the Buddha partly as hyperbole, like in all cases, but I think also literally, because for the Buddha succumbing to hate was such a bad thing to do for oneself. It's one of the worst things we can do in terms of harming ourselves, to succumb to hate. Someone who really understands and sees the self-harm from hate understands to never give up love, always work hard not to succumb to hate.

It's not a message to not defend yourself. I think the conditions for this powerful statement is if you have no other choice and you can't escape. Because the Buddha said that he did condone—maybe not acts of violence, but acts of self-defense to escape from the harm others are doing to us. He said that a monastic can strike out to defend themselves for the purpose of escaping, provided they do it without any hate, provided they can do it with goodwill towards the people they're escaping from.

What striking out meant back then maybe was to lift up your hand and block a blow or push someone away. There's an example of someone who protected their own life by pushing someone off a cliff from the time of the Buddha, and the Buddha understood that matter-of-factly, that that was somehow not an act of hatred, but an act of self-defense. How far this idea of self-defense goes, and how far we can go in our lives to do that kind of act—the Buddha was not just saying stay passive and allow yourself to be taken advantage of. There's nowhere in the Buddha's teachings that says you somehow just accept violence being done to you. If anything, my interpretation of the Buddha is that you should always look hostility in the eye, be strong and forceful, hold your ground even if you have to step away and walk away, but there's no idea that you're supposed to cower or be less than or be somehow meek.

In Buddhism, the example of the Buddha is talked about with the language of the texts as a language of power, of strength. Sometimes modern people, when they read this language of power and strength in Buddhism, interpret it as being a certain kind of machoism or an overemphasis on strength, but when I read the texts I interpret it to be the nice combination of love with strength. Strength with love and this dedication.

That's what Martin Luther King says in this quote: "I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force... the force of unifying love."

I see in the chat, you mentioned me misspeaking about love and hate. And like what I said, I think I got a little bit jumbled in my love and hate, where I don't remember well enough to go back and correct it, so if you listened hopefully you understood my jumble.

Here's a quote from Martin Luther King about Gandhi: "Gandhi was probably the first person in history to lift the love ethic of Jesus above mere interaction between individuals to a powerful and effective social force on a large scale. Love for Gandhi was a potent instrument for social and collective transformation. It was in this Gandhian emphasis on love and non-violence that I discovered the method for social reform that I had been seeking."

One of my first Zen teachers said that the Buddhist contribution to humanity was the importance of meditating. Gandhi's contribution to humanity was the importance to decide where you're going to meditate. I think what he had in mind were these non-violent protests, where you marched, where you stood, where you sat. You can sit in such a way that you're there to offer an alternative to oppression, to violence that exists in this world. They had in the South in the 1950s and 60s these sit-ins. Us Buddhists will often call meditation "sitting." I'm going to sit. So where do we sit? Now the possibility of sit-ins as non-violent protests, we've seen this over and over again.

It's easy to say they don't work, but I think the genius of Gandhi and perhaps of Martin Luther King was to not do this naively, but to really choose very carefully where we show up to sit, to walk, to march, to do actions of non-violence to really change other people and to search for cooperation. To not live a life of competition, but one of cooperation, to seek to change the heart of the other, not by force.

One of the important parts of Martin Luther King's life was that he realized at some point that the civil rights movement, as important as it was, and voting rights, as important as it was, were not enough to liberate the African-American population in this country because of the tremendous poverty that existed. So he became an anti-poverty champion. He saw that civil rights for African-Americans and for all people were intimately connected to economic change and to an improved economic position for African-Americans in this country.

He worked in conversation with President Lyndon Johnson^[9] around this, and Lyndon Johnson began this great movement to eradicate poverty in this country. But then Martin Luther King saw what happened when President Johnson escalated the war in Vietnam—that the money for poverty programs in the country was taken away from those programs and used to pay for the American war in Vietnam.

So Martin Luther King started to see all these three as being unified, necessary to be addressed: civil rights, poverty, and militarism, or war. He started actively fighting against the Vietnam War, actively supporting anti-poverty programs, and working for civil rights. He lost a lot of his popularity because of this. He was seen even by many of the people who supported him earlier as somehow becoming an enemy of the state in a way he hadn't before. But he saw these as being unified, as being connected.

He talked about the importance of restitution for African-Americans. He said, "I'm not talking about getting them paid back all the money that they deserve from all their work they did in slavery, but there has to be enough focus and financial support to bring them out of poverty so as to repair the damages of slavery." The interesting thing he said about this, because his love was so all-inclusive, was he did not seek full restitution of wages lost to slavery, which he believed impossible, but proposed a government compensatory program of 50 billion dollars over 10 years to all disadvantaged groups.

Fifty billion dollars now seems like a drop in the bucket compared to what this last year the spending programs the federal government is doing. There's 65 billion dollars just available for broadband across the country. Martin Luther King posited, "The money spent would be more than amply justified by the benefits that would accrue to the nation through a spectacular decline in school dropouts, family breakups, crime rates, illegitimacy, swollen relief rolls, rioting and other social evils."

He said he didn't want it to be only for African-Americans. He wanted the money spent for all people who were poor. He said, "This effort should benefit the disadvantaged of all races."

Seeing the evils or the problems of poverty, in the times when the Buddha gave social teachings—teachings that addressed governments and how they should care for everyone—he saw that one of the most important roles for governments back then, the kings, was anti-poverty programs. It was to provide the means for people to be able to pull themselves out of poverty, and provide them with land and other means. Without overcoming poverty, how can people thrive and develop?

So this dedication to love in action would take the form of not allowing people to live in poverty. To support anti-poverty programs, support those who are poor in our country, support people who are disadvantaged. That's why I was so touched by this one man in Thailand who used his own savings to provide enough money as a gift to this woman so she could break out of her cycles of poverty and the sex trade, and open up a shop in her hometown to make a difference.

I would like to suggest that we think of Martin Luther King's holiday as a holiday of love. The rationale for that is that love was what Martin Luther King based his life on, and all the good work he did for our society that we celebrate was really based on his foundation for love. When this country went astray and went into war with Vietnam, he knew that that war in Vietnam was going to damage this country. He called it a poison for the United States.

One analysis for the consequence of the Vietnam War is that we're still suffering from the divisions in this country that that war opened up. And if it's true what Martin Luther King said, that the focus on overcoming poverty that started just before the escalation of the American war in Vietnam came to an end or was impoverished—this has had a lasting effect on this country that we've never really come back to address poverty in the same all-encompassing way.

We've ended up in a country where the poison of hate exists in our society in such a huge way. So let's be careful. Remember, hate does not end with hate. Let's be phenomenally careful to use our practice, to use our care and our love, to not succumb to hate ourselves.

And if that's all we do, fantastic. But maybe when we don't succumb to hate, maybe we too can celebrate love, and can open up to love, and let love, kindness, goodwill, generosity, respect, compassion be the operating principles for how we live this life. Because if we do that, then that is the world that we're contributing to make. With every action that we do that's influenced by love, we are contributing to a world where love has a place.

May we love on this weekend, and perhaps on every day. Thank you.